The annexation of the province of Oudh was justifiable on the ground of morals, though not on that of policy. Ever since the nawab wazir, Shuja-ud-Dowlah, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the very existence of Oudh as an independent state had depended only upon the protection of British bayonets. Thus, preserved alike from foreign invasion and from domestic rebellion, the long line of subsequent nawabs had given way to that neglect of public affairs and those private vices which naturally flow from irresponsible power. Their only redeeming virtue was steady loyalty to the British government. Warning after warning had been given to the nawabs, who had assumed the title of king since 1819, to put their house in order; but every warning was neglected, and Lord Dalhousie at last carried into effect what both the previous governors-general had threatened. In 1856, the last year of his rule, he issued orders to General (afterwards Sir James) Outram, then resident at the court of Lucknow, to assume the direct administration of Oudh, on the ground that "the British government would be guilty in the sight of God and man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an administration fraught with suffering to millions." The king, Wajid Ali, bowed to irresistible force, though he ever refused to recognize the justice of his deposition. After a mission to England, by way of protest and appeal, he settled down in the pleasant suburb of Garden Reach near Calcutta, where he lived in the enjoyment of a pension of £120,000 a year. Oudh was thus annexed without a blow; but it may be doubted whether the one measure of Lord Dalhousie upon which he looked back himself with the clearest conscience was not the very one that most alarmed native public opinion.
Lord Dalhousie was succeeded by his friend, Lord Canning, who, at the farewell banquet in England given to him by the court of directors, uttered these prophetic words: "I wish for a peaceful term of office. But I cannot forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, no larger than a man's hand, but which, growing larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst and overwhelm us with ruin." In the following year the sepoys of the Bengal army mutinied, and all the valley of the Ganges from Patna to Delhi rose in open rebellion.